Animals are amazing creatures and one of the most fascinating things about them is how every different species is capable of producing so many offspring at once.
While us humans are used to producing just one baby after every pregnancy (although sometimes twins or triplets are born), other animals can give birth to many offspring at once!
So, how many babies does a lion have after one pregnancy?
Here we are going to be taking a look at lions and their offspring, including just how many offspring they produce per pregnancy. So, let’s find out the answer!
Lionesses And Their Litters
Lionesses will give birth to their letters after a gestation period of around 110 days. This means that after nearly four months since mating, the lioness will find a nice secluded den away from the pride where she will give birth to her cubs.
The average litter size for lions is between one to four cubs, although some lionesses have been seen producing litters with up to six cubs. However, most litters consist of three or four cubs – but not all of those cubs will make it to adulthood.
The mortality rate for lion cubs is extremely high as there are so many factors that can contribute to the early death of a lion cub.
Less than half of lion cubs survive to maturity due to reasons like starvation, abandonment, or they are killed by predators. Sometimes, cubs will also be killed by rival male lions seeking to overthrow the cubs’ father as leader of the pride.
To improve their chances of raising their own cubs, the rival male will kill any young cubs left behind by the previous male.
Cubs are not even safe from their own dinner. Prey animals like wildebeest or buffaloes will even try to crush lion cubs to death if they find the den where the mother often leaves her cubs while she goes to hunt.
This is because these prey animals are trying to kill their predators before they can grow big enough to kill them.
For this reason, a mother lioness will move her cubs from den to den even before they have fully weaned.
Lion cubs wean at six or seven months old and begin participating in hunting as young as eleven months old, although they do not reach maturity until they are two years old – although very few cubs reach this stage.
So, lions will have quite bountiful litters because the more cubs they have, the higher the chances of at least one of them reaching adulthood.
How Many Cubs Will A Lioness Have In A Lifetime?
With lion cub litters ranging from just one to six at a time, it’s fair to say that a single lioness is likely to have a lot of children throughout her entire lifetime.
Lionesses are polygamous and can breed throughout the entire year so this means that from the moment they are sexually mature, they will start to mate and breed.
However, due to the high mortality rate for cubs, a single lioness may never even successfully raise a cub even though she is likely to give birth multiple times in her lifetime.
How many cubs a lioness will have in her lifetime relies on how many successful litters she has.
Lionesses will not mate and try for another litter until all her cubs are either dead, lost or have reached maturity and no longer need her supervision and care.
For this reason, the maximum time between litters is generally two years as this is the time it takes for a cub to fully mature.
However, because some litters never see a cub reach maturity, the lioness may try again a lot sooner.
On average, a lioness will give birth to between eight to eighteen cubs in her lifetime. This heavily depends on litter sizes and how many successful cubs she has raised to maturity.
As for litters, the average lioness will have around six litters in her lifetime – again, depending on how long the previous litters live for.
How Many Cubs Will A Male Lion Have In A Lifetime?
Lions are polygamous which means that while the lionesses are pregnant and caring for their litter, their cubs could have many other siblings beyond their littermates!
This is because lions live in groups known as prides which generally contain one or two males and several related females (sisters, mothers, aunts, cousins, etc).
The male lions will try to breed with every available female lion in their pride so multiple lionesses could be pregnant at the same time, all carrying a litter of cubs with the same father.
However, like we mentioned earlier, only a few of those cubs will reach maturity.
There are many factors that make estimating how many children a male lion will have in his lifetime very difficult.
It depends on how many fertile lionesses are in his pride, if he is sharing breeding duties with another male, and how long he lives for.
Male lions have very short lifespans on average because they are often killed by rivals – but even in the short time that they are breeding in the pride, male lions are sure to sire a lot of cubs.
For example, if a pride contains one male lion and seven fertile lionesses, and each lioness has a litter of three cubs at the same time, then that means that the single male lion will have sired twenty one cubs!
However, only around six of those cubs will reach maturity on average.
Conclusion
So, the average litter size for lions is between three or four cubs although a lioness can give birth to as few as one cub to as many as six cubs in one go.
However, nature is cruel and very few cubs make it to maturity so it is possible that a lioness may have many litters and see no cubs reach maturity at all.
Hi, my name is Joe Edwards and I am fascinated by the world of big cats. It all started when my family and I visited a safari park when I was six years old. I begged my parents to get me a stuffed lion as a memento, and later a book about big cats for Christmas.
Now, over 20 years later, I still can’t get enough of them!
